


later to be witnessed

by raven (singlecrow)



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:33:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23419042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/raven
Summary: “You can just ask me to come, Garak,” he says. “You don’t have to do... this.”Whatever this is. Staging the discovery of a dead human in the woods so a Starfleet doctor will have to come and do an autopsy, possibly.  The story of their lives would hardly be a repetitive Cardassian great epic if itstoppedbeing eminently ridiculous.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 17
Kudos: 162





	later to be witnessed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [purplefringe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplefringe/gifts).



In their hasty retreat from Bajor, the Cardassians left some things behind. Shrapnel; some orphans. Bodies buried in shallow graves in the woods. A salutary lesson that no one understood at the time. Nearly a decade later Julian leans against a tree in a backwater public park on Cardassia Prime while he waits for the local city guard to make their escape. The place was marked by a rough cairn of stones, but it’s the passage of time and water that have brought the bones to the surface.

“You sent for me very quickly,” he observes. He’s not the closest Starfleet medical officer, even in these post-bellum times. Not even the most likely to come when called, though there are Deep Space Nine gossip columns that make jokes about that. _Minister Garak and Dr Julian Bashir, maintaining Federation-Cardassian governmental relations_. The local guard, who are neat and sober but have nothing else to recommend them, look deeply uncomfortable and finally clear out for the day.

“Call it an excuse,” says a voice from the shadows. Garak steps out from the shade of whatever this planet has instead of gloomy cypresses and pine. It’s supremely sinister. Julian laughs.

“You can just ask me to come, Garak,” he says. “You don’t have to do... this.”

Whatever this is. Staging the discovery of a dead human in the woods so a Starfleet doctor will have to come and do an autopsy, possibly. Julian wouldn’t put that past him. The story of their lives would hardly be a repetitive Cardassian great epic if it _stopped_ being eminently ridiculous.

“I don’t,” Garak agrees, surprisingly readily, “but I do need your help. Come on.”

He steps out over the heavy leaf mould and mulch, in proper boots that sink slightly into the ground. He’s dressed for this, Julian notes. Nothing, not even elevation to the higher political echelons, would rid Elim Garak of the proper spycraft. The ground is rough and uneven; he takes Julian’s hand to hep him over the heaps of disturbed earth. His fingers in Julian’s are cool and reptilian. Julian grips on tightly until they both pause, standing beside the body. It’s lying where it was found, but now arranged neatly on orange plastic sheeting. The city guard have also bagged up all the items of interest found with or near the body and put them on a small floating platform with an awning to protect it from the elements. These woods form part of a public space, gifted to the inhabitants of the city by some minor patriarch a century before. The public don’t seem to appreciate the gift. There’s no one around. Not even the close-by sounds of the city permeate the coniferous murk. 

“All right,” Julian says, resigned to going through this step by step. “Human skeleton, probably male from the narrow shape of the pelvis, dead at least five years, possibly much more, died of natural causes, buried in a hurry. What could you possibly need help with?”

He’s got his tricorder in hand, but the city guard’s report told him everything he needed to know before he even got here. They may lack style but they do know how to cordon off a crime scene, mark off where everything was found and lay everything out nicely. There are any number of Cardassian pathologists who could handle a single human body with no signs of blunt trauma. The only reason Julian is out here under the trees, almost alone, is because Minister Garak has taken a personal interest.

Julian waits. 

Garak lets him, and matters rest there for a while. But they’ve been what they are to each other for too long. Garak relents after a while, sits down cross-legged on the ground next to the body and motions for Julian to join him. It’s not comfortable, but Julian doesn’t mind it. If he’s learned anything in these last years, it’s that he doesn’t mind being where Garak is.

“Look,” Garak says, reaching out to the nearest skeletal finger, delicately untangling a scrap of cloth from its snarl around bone. “That’s Cardassian cloth. Not export quality, even. Woven here on Cardassia.”

“You would know, I suppose,” Julian says. “And?”

“Perhaps nothing.” Garak goes on, still twirling the threads, seemingly impervious to the fact he’s hand-in-hand with a corpse. “Perhaps nothing at all, my dear doctor. Shall we pickpocket him, while we’re here?”

Julian rolls his eyes, quite prepared for Garak to reach down beside the body and try and do just that. But the city guard have already done it, of course. Garak gets up for a moment and fetches down a plastic bag with one item sealed lovingly inside. He slices it open with a fingernail and gives it to Julian in the manner of a rare gift.

“Oh,” Julian says. It’s a Starfleet combadge, not the current standard design or the one before, but the one before that. Julian’s not an expert – Miles O’Brien would be – but he thinks it’s of the type that are issued to officers on a starship. He taps it, out of habit. Nothing happens. It should draw power from its immediate environment, but the cairn built to mark the body has collapsed over time and even the hardiest microelectronics give in after years under earth and stone. 

Garak gestures at the combadge, but doesn’t touch it. “You see.”

Julian turns it over and over in his hands. He has the impression that he’s not the first to do so; that the metal has been smoothed to a fine sheen by constant handling. “I don’t think I do.”

“Oh, my dear.” Garak’s one concession to the relentless passage of time is, sometimes, to drop the end of the endearment. _My dear doctor_ , over the replimat on the Promenade, but they inhabit somewhere else now. “Well, then, answer me this. How long do replicated organic prosthetics last, after the death of the body?”

“Not long,” Julian says, carefully. “They’re not made to last, even in life. Without a blood supply they just… collapse into organic molecules, I suppose. They’d be washed away faster than flesh, much faster than bone.”

“How interesting,” Garak says. He stands up and stretches out, flexing scales and skin in a manner Julian used to find wholly alien. “So you couldn’t say for certain if they had been present, in a case like this.”

“You might,” Julian says. “Even artificial organic flesh has to self-repair and self-replicate, which means it has to have DNA. There might be traces of it on the surface of the skeleton long after the substance of the prosthetics had gone. I suppose you’d only test for it if...”

“If?”

“If you had some reason to believe it were there.” Julian gets up, walks around the excavated grave, thinks it through with all the cognitive capacity he has available. He has a pleasant, worthwhile life on Deep Space Nine; he likes the work and the people. He comes here to Cardassia Prime every few weeks or months, depending on his duties elsewhere. It feels, each time, like something inside his mind has stretched out and taken up all the space it the needs. "I'm sure you did think it was there. I'm sure you had them test for it."

“Interesting,” Garak says, again. “Why might one think that?”

“You might think,” Julian says, “that a human wearing Cardassian clothes, woven on Cardassia, might also have been made to look Cardassian in other ways. That they might have been in hiding here.”

“A spy, then.” Garak is enjoying himself.

“Yes.” Julian is, too. “Or... no.”

It’s been bothering him, all this time. It’s been sitting in plain sight. He picks up a rock from the cairn and tosses it from hand to hand, then puts it down. “Why,” he asks, after a while, “would you kill and bury an enemy spy, and _mark the grave_?”

Not kill, even. Natural causes.

“I don’t know,” Garak says. “Why would you stay on Cardassia, as a human made to look like Cardassians, when you had your means of escape with you all the time?” 

He means the combadge. Julian grips it tightly, so the heat of his body transfers to the metal and the oils of his skin burnish it to a shine. Someone handled it over and over, and never used it. Someone chose to stay. 

“You said you needed my help,” Julian says, not a question. 

“Take that combadge and find out who it belonged to,” Garak says, with the authority that comes to him easily these days. 

“You could have gone through official channels, for that,” Julian says, mildly.

“And if you see fit,” Garak says, as though he hadn’t spoken, “let that knowledge die with you.”

Julian gets up to take another look at the bagged effects, looking for a wedding ring. It’s where he expected it to be. He takes it out of the plastic and puts it in his pocket, with the combadge. “Must you be so overdramatic,” he complains after a moment. “Let that knowledge _die with you_. Really, Garak.”

“Stay for dinner, won’t you?” Garak says. He offers a hand, which Julian takes. They walk steadily out of the woods, through to the open space of the public park, out of the depth of gloom. The sun is descending greenishly to the horizon. “My cook is expanding into Klingon cuisine. It’s quite unnecessarily wriggly but I’m told it’s rather en vogue.”

“Sounds great,” Julian says. He’ll stay for dinner, and stay the night, and return to Deep Space Nine in the morning. “I’d love to.”

“Good,” Garak says. After a moment, he adds, “At that time, it would have been best to keep it secret. Even in death.”

Julian nods, thinking about that other human Starfleet officer, who stayed on Cardassia for some reason not spycraft or enemy fire; who wore a wedding ring, and was laid by loving hands in Cardassian soil. 

“Things have changed,” he says. He goes with Garak out into the sun, and doesn’t let go of that cautiously offered hand.


End file.
